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New Scientist Live

Chikungunya may explode with rainy season

IT’S not something you would want to bring home. Causing fever and debilitating pain, chikungunya virus has spread around the Caribbean, invaded South America – and could travel still further in the tourists who have flocked to the region for Carnival and winter breaks.

Since the virus first appeared in the Americas last December, cases have soared past 8000 on five Caribbean islands and French Guiana. And it could be lurking unrecognised in other places, too. “You can’t tell chikungunya from dengue clinically,” says Robert Tesh of the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, and dengue is common in the region.

More than 90 per cent of known chikungunya cases have been in territories held by France, which had extensive experience with the virus after outbreaks hit French islands in the Indian Ocean in 2005. “It is highly probable that the disease has been under-diagnosed on other islands,” says Xavier de Lamballerie of Aix-Marseille University in France.

Rainfall and temperatures are relatively low across the region at present, reducing the number of mosquitoes that carry the virus. But “the situation will be very, very different in a few months”, says de Lamballerie. Virologists predict an explosion of cases when the rains return – and some could be in tourists returning to North America and Europe, where some places will have mosquitoes that can carry the virus.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Carnival could help spread painful virus”